Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  Stephen had never felt so alone in all his life and, despite his best efforts to stay strong for her, let out a sob. ‘Please, Mam,’ he said. ‘I can’t lose you too.’

  ‘Hush now,’ she said, and stroked his hair. ‘God has a plan for you, Stephen. You have a good heart, my love. Follow it and everything will work out in the end, of that I have no doubt.’

  ‘I will, Mam,’ he said. Hugging her, he closed his eyes. ‘I love you.’

  ‘And I love you,’ she said.

  All of a sudden there was a lurch like the sensation of falling just before one drifts off to sleep. Stephen opened his eyes and saw that he was flat on his back on the rug. The light shining in through the windows had dimmed and changed direction, and his mother’s body sat slumped in the armchair, her head to one side and a blood-soaked handkerchief in her hand.

  He shivered at the sudden drop in temperature and clambered to his feet. Although he had not been able to save his mother, he had at least been given a chance to say goodbye, and the purpose of his funny turns was, perhaps, a little clearer.

  2

  Present Day

  Sam slid off his shoes the second he was through the front door and raced upstairs before anyone could intercept him. Once his bedroom door was closed, he wedged a chair under the handle, which was the closest thing he had to a lock, then sat on the corner of his bed and pulled the bottle of Tetradyamide out of his backpack. He could feel another headache coming on and, staring down, realised his hands were shaking at the enormity of what had happened.

  Malcolm Fairview was dead…

  …and Sam had found him and done nothing.

  Well, not entirely nothing: he’d called an ambulance and taken the bottle of Tetradyamide before running away.

  He shoved the bottle back in his bag, burrowed under the duvet and hugged his knees to his chest. Almost immediately an image popped into his mind: Fairview on his back, dead eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Feeling the sting of bile at the back of his throat, Sam let out a shudder. In hindsight he obviously should have waited until the ambulance arrived, and it was difficult to escape the conclusion that the things he had seen and done in that alternative December had changed him so drastically he couldn’t tell right from wrong anymore.

  All of a sudden there was a knock at the door. Sam poked his head out from under his covers to see the handle move half an inch before striking the back of the chair.

  ‘Sam?’ Chrissie called from the landing. ‘That you?’

  ‘Er, yeah,’ he called back. ‘Who else would it be?’

  There was a pause, then: ‘Why are you back from the library so early? I wasn’t expecting you till after lunch. And why won’t your door open?’

  ‘I’m in bed. I didn’t feel well and—’

  ‘Not another seizure, was it?’

  ‘No no, nothing like that. I felt a bit gippy, that’s all. Probably just my epilepsy medication. It gives me a funny tummy sometimes.’ He bit his lip, hoping his voice hadn’t wavered as his lies stacked up on one another like a house of cards. ‘I’m going to try and go back to sleep for a bit, all right?’

  ‘Okay,’ Chrissie said. There was silence, followed by the sound of her footsteps retreating down the stairs.

  Sam waited for a while before taking the Tetradyamide out again. Resting back against his pillows, he turned the chipped brown bottle around and around in his hands. Eventually he opened the lid, shook a sticky little pill out and dropped it into his mouth. Grimacing at the taste, he washed it down with a gulp of water from the glass beside his bed, and within a few seconds the throbbing at the back of his head had receded.

  Once the drug took effect he should probably return to the night before and warn Fairview. But then what would he say, Oh, by the way, you might want to be careful because you’re going to drop dead tomorrow morning? Apart from convincing Fairview that Sam was a crackpot, the only thing that was likely to achieve would be to ruin the man’s last night alive.

  Malcolm Fairview had been in his mid-to-late forties – perfect heart attack age, really – and, judging by his build, hadn’t exercised much. The only things that could have saved him were a low-cholesterol diet and years of gym sessions, and while Tetradyamide made Sam powerful, there were limits to what even he could do. Besides, warning Fairview could well prevent the scientist from inviting Sam over that morning, which would in turn remove the bottle of pills from Sam’s possession and create a new timeline in which he would be unable to put things right.

  So, then, although sad, Fairview’s death was probably unavoidable, and at the moment there were bigger fish to fry. Although Esteban Haufner had since vanished, Sam knew exactly where he would be on the day of his dad’s funeral, which also happened to be the day of the Thames House bombing. It seemed feasible that, if he could return to that point and prevent the bombing once again, he might then be able to save the lives of those killed while simultaneously gaining revenge for his father. In doing so, however, there remained a distinct possibility that he might create a new timeline identical to the one he had altered on Christmas Eve. Even if he tipped off the police anonymously this time around, McHayden and the Tempus Project would still be out there, and finding himself back in a reality in which Chrissie was dead and he was a prisoner was a risk Sam couldn’t take. In fact, so much seemed to hinge on the day of the bombing that it was starting to feel like a sort of temporal crossroads, and he was too afraid to return there in case he made a mistake that he couldn’t later correct.

  He let out a sigh and looked inside the bottle. It was difficult to estimate how many pills it contained, but it seem to be more or less a hundred, which meant more or less a hundred opportunities to see into the future or alter the past. There had to be some other way to stop Haufner, one that didn’t involve such disastrous consequences. Unfortunately Sam couldn’t see what that was at the moment, but he had plenty of other problems that should be far simpler to solve.

  A warm shiver suddenly danced up his spine, and the walls of his bedroom became tinged with colour. Letting out a deep breath, he closed his eyes. Finding a way to pay for his mum’s treatment in America and keep a roof over his family’s heads might be a start, as would finding Eva again. He would just have to work his way up to the Haufner problem and then, once that was solved, perhaps travel back a couple months and advise Fairview to book a check-up with his cardiologist.

  3

  Frances lifted the line of police tape for Campbell to duck under and then trotted down the steps to the basement flat after him. Once inside, a forensics officer handed them each a set of white overalls. After pulling these on over their clothes and sliding on vinyl booties and latex gloves, they followed the man to a darkened bedroom off the main hall.

  As they entered, Bikram Kaur, Lead Scenes of Crime Officer, turned and lowered his camera. Instead of a hood, he wore a blue turban and a hair net over his thick beard.

  ‘Ah, Detective Campbell, Sergeant Hinds! What took you?’

  Frances flinched internally, as she did whenever addressed by her lowly new rank. In the aftermath of the Thames House bombing, SO15 – otherwise known as Counter Terrorism Command – had been subjected to an independent investigation as Whitehall sought a scapegoat on whom to direct the finger of blame. The investigation was a whitewash and SO15 had been officially disbanded the week before Christmas, with a new cross-departmental Counter Terrorism Force set up in its place. With the exception of those with friends in the right places, most senior officers had been stripped of their posts. Due to her perceived failures in the Flight 0368 case, a crime for which Esteban Haufner was also believed to be responsible, Frances had been one of the first in the firing line, and was offered the choice of handing in her resignation or accepting a demotion. After devoting most of her adult life to policing, she’d had no intention of resigning, so had accepted the latter option through gritted teeth, effectively negating the decade of hard graft it had taken to her rise to the rank of Inspector.

>   ‘We’ve been busy,’ Campbell replied gruffly. ‘No rest for the wicked. Or those trying to catch them.’

  ‘What’ve we got?’ Frances asked, trying to focus on the job in hand as she stepped around the bed.

  Kaur nodded towards the body of a middle-aged man lying spread-eagled on the floor. ‘Malcolm Fairview. Forty-six years old. Divorced. No children. A former government scientist, recently made redundant. History of angina.’

  ‘The cause of death?’

  ‘A cardiac arrest, it appears.’

  ‘Then why are we here?’

  Kaur crouched and, with a knowing smile, gestured to a small dot on the side of Fairview’s neck. ‘A puncture wound,’ he explained. ‘The absence of scabbing indicates it was delivered immediately prior to death. Looks like a toxin was administered by injection, possibly cyanide in light of the cardiac arrest. The toxicology report will tell us one way or the other.’ He stood again, peeled off his latex gloves, took a packet of mints from his pocket and popped one in his mouth. ‘There are no visible defence wounds and the initial inspection of the flat shows no evidence of forced entry, all of which points towards the likelihood that the killer was known to his victim.’

  ‘What about the time of death?’ Campbell asked.

  ‘The body temperature is still relatively high, and rigor mortis and lividity are only just setting in, which rules out anything longer than a few hours. Best guess, I’d say somewhere around ten this morning.’

  ‘That’s right about the time the call to emergency services was clocked.’ Campbell pulled his notepad out, opened it and tapped a page with his finger. ‘Yep, logged at 10:11, lasting twenty-eight seconds.’

  ‘Can you get us a recording?’ Frances asked.

  ‘They’re already sending one over.’

  ‘Good.’ She turned back to Kaur. ‘Anything else you can tell us?’

  ‘Plenty.’ He crunched his mint between his teeth and swallowed the broken fragments. ‘This way.’

  They followed him out of the bedroom, down the hall and into a living room where two members of his team were still dusting for prints. At the far end was a window overlooking the back garden and, off to one side, an archway leading to a kitchen, where two mugs of cold, dark tea sat stewing on the worktop.

  Kaur knelt next to a large black crate in the middle of the Persian carpet and pulled out the handset of a telephone sealed in a plastic evidence bag. ‘We’ve found two sets of prints in the flat, the majority belonging to the victim and the other an unknown.’ He turned the bagged telephone over, handed it to Campbell and pointed to a strip of clear plastic covering the impression of a hand. ‘The unknown. There’s another handset in the kitchen, but this was in the same room as the body. We’ve lifted a complete thumbprint and the first three fingers of the right hand. We also found more prints on the handle of the back door, which was left unlocked.’

  ‘Probably how the killer made his way out,’ Campbell said, and passed the phone to Frances.

  After studying the prints for a moment, she handed it back to Kaur.

  ‘There’s more,’ he said, and reached into the box again, pulling out a larger bag containing a laptop. ‘Julie found this in a flowerbed at the bottom of the garden, next to a broken trellis fence. It’s password protected, meaning we’ll have to pass it over to Cybercrimes to get it unlocked. Normally takes a few days.’

  ‘Good work,’ Campbell said. ‘Let us know when you get the toxicology report back, or if anything else turns up, will you?’

  ‘Naturally,’ Kaur said, and popped another mint in his mouth. ‘We do all the leg work and you lot take the credit, as per usual.’

  * * * * *

  After changing out of their overalls, Frances and Campbell left the flat and climbed back in the car. In addition to the affront to her self-esteem, one of the principle drawbacks of Frances’s demotion was that it had brought her into close contact with Mark Campbell again. The pair had been classmates as cadets. In those days she had been the star of the class, often helping him with assignments, but now, as if to add insult to injury, he was her boss.

  ‘So,’ he said, starting the engine, ‘any ideas?’

  Frances buckled her seatbelt and drummed her fingers against her chin. ‘Did you notice the teas on the kitchen counter?’

  ‘What, you think the victim was expecting someone?’

  ‘Given what Kaur told us, I think it’s quite possible that the victim let his killer into the flat willingly. Then at some point our man catches Fairview unawares, injects him with a toxin and calls emergency services. Perhaps he was disturbed, because he leaves in a hurry, fleeing the scene via the back door and dropping the laptop as he escapes over the wall at the end of the garden.’

  ‘Sounds plausible enough,’ Campbell said, and performed a U-turn. ‘The thing I don’t get is, why call emergency services?’

  ‘A good question,’ Frances said. ‘And I suspect answering it will go a long way to finding our killer. In the meantime we could begin canvassing neighbours to see if anyone saw or heard anything. My gut feeling is that this may have something to do with Fairview’s former employment. After all, why else would anyone take his laptop?’

  ‘Burglary?’ Campbell suggested. ‘Believe me, I’ve seen people killed for less.’

  Frances thought it unlikely, but decided to keep her own counsel. ‘I’d call the ex-wife in for questioning, too,’ she said. ‘Nine times out of ten a bitter spouse is involved.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Campbell said.

  At that moment his phone chimed. He pulled over, tapped the screen and held it to his ear.

  After a minute he looked up. ‘It’s the recording of the call to emergency services,’ he said, and passed the phone over.

  Frances heard the operator say, ‘Emergency services, which service do you require?’

  ‘Ambulance,’ the voice of a young man said. ‘I need an ambulance.’

  ‘One moment please. And your location?’

  ‘Er, 47C Beaumont Crescent, Notting Hill. I just stopped by to see someone and…and I think he’s dead.’

  ‘Okay, a unit has been dispatched. And your name is?’ A stretch of silence, then: ‘Sir, are you still there? I need a name.’

  The recording ended with a rustle and a click as the caller hung up.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Campbell asked as Frances passed his phone back.

  ‘I could be wrong,’ she said, ‘but I think I recognise that voice from somewhere.’

  4

  ‘That was never a red card,’ Lewis said, flinging the TV remote across the settee in disgust. ‘He barely even touched the guy.’

  ‘Red card,’ Conner, his little brother, repeated from the armchair beside him. ‘Red-card-red-card-red-card…’

  The doorbell rang. Lewis heaved himself up and went to answer it. Sam was standing on the front step, grinning like a madman. Even though it was chucking it down outside, he didn’t have his hood up and his hair was drenched and flat to his forehead.

  ‘All right, mate,’ Lewis said. ‘You want a towel or something?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘For your hair. It is raining, you realise.’

  Sam rubbed his hand over his hair, lowered it for inspection and looked genuinely surprised to find water there. He looked up again and laughed. ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Lewis stepped to one side and ushered him in. ‘How’d it go on Thursday then? That Fairview bloke give you what you wanted?’

  Sam rubbed his nose and looked away, then unzipped his coat and pulled a brown bottle and a small, wire-bound notepad from the inside pocket.

  ‘That’s it? That’s what all the fuss was about?’

  ‘Tetradyamide,’ Sam said, shaking the bottle to make a rattling sound.

  ‘And he just gave it to you, no questions asked?’

  ‘Er, you could say that.’

  ‘And he’s definitely not going to press charges over what happened with Lance?’ />
  ‘I can categorically promise you he won’t be pressing charges.’ Sam put the bottle and notepad in his trouser pockets, then took his coat off and hung it on the end of the banister. ‘So, are you watching the football?’

  ‘Wish I wasn’t,’ Lewis said. ‘West Ham are two nil down and just had a man sent off. It isn’t even half time yet and the game’s as good as over.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

  Lewis paused in the doorway to the lounge and gave his friend a scathing look. ‘To be honest, that just shows how little you know about football, Sam.’

  As they entered, Conner looked up from the settee, gave them a gap-toothed smile and waved the remote. Instead of the lunchtime derby between West Ham United and Arsenal, the television now showed a bunch of people dressed in dinosaur costumes dancing around a papier-mâché volcano to sickeningly upbeat music.

  Lewis lunged for the remote, but Conner ducked, rolled across the cushions, drew himself up and then jumped the gap between the settee and armchair.

  ‘Lewis, Lewis, you can’t catch me! Lewis, Lewis, you smell like wee!’

  ‘That’s it, you’ve had it!’ Lewis hurled himself at his brother, but again Conner was too fast and dived onto the floor, somersaulting across the carpet before leaping to his feet again by the door.

  Sam pulled a pound coin from his pocket. ‘This is for you, Conner. If we can have the remote back.’

  Conner tilted his head to one side, weighing the offer.

  ‘And there’ll be another pound after the match is over,’ Sam said, ‘if you go upstairs and play with your toys and leave me and Lewis to watch it in peace.’

  ‘Two pounds? To go and play with my toys?’

  ‘That’s right – one now, one later.’

  Conner dropped the remote and snatched the coin from Sam’s hand. As he disappeared up the stairs, Lewis heard him shout, ‘Muppets!’

  Sam scooped up the remote from the floor and passed it over. ‘Conner’s growing fast,’ he said.